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Ottolenghi simple (2018)
8.7/10on Open Library
Published
The book that made Ottolenghi's flavors fit a weeknight. Each of the 130 recipes is tagged against the SIMPLE letters: short on time, 10 ingredients or fewer, make ahead, pantry, lazy, and easier than you think. You can flip straight to the S or the P and know dinner will not turn into a project.
That tagging is the real gift, because it teaches you which dishes to save for Saturday and which to cook tonight. The "simple" label is loose in places and a few dishes still run to a long ingredient list, but it remains the easiest way into this bright, herb-and-yogurt style of cooking, and the one most likely to get used rather than admired.
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Persiana Easy (2025)
Published
If the brief is "Persian flavors, minimum fuss," this is the most direct answer on the shelf. Ghayour's 2025 book sets out to make every recipe as easy as possible, and it shows: midweek meals and sheet-pan dishes lead the way, and every recipe comes with a photo, so you know what you are aiming for before you start.
It is the newest book here and the one to grab if you want dinner on the table fast with flavors that taste like you tried much harder. The pastries and sweet treats are a bonus for the weekend, not homework for Tuesday.
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Persiana Everyday (2022)
Published
The title is the promise, and the book keeps it. More than 100 recipes built for everyday eating, sorted around how much effort you have left: no-cook, quick-prep, quick-cook and one-pot. That structure is what makes it useful on a weeknight, because you choose by energy level rather than by cuisine.
Ghayour's style is generous and relaxed rather than strictly traditional, so expect Persian flavors folded into dishes that feed a table of friends without much stress. If you already own her first book, Persiana, this is the more practical follow-up; if weeknights are the priority, it is the better first buy.
More about Persiana Everyday4
Persiana (2014)
8.0/10on Open Library
Published
The 2014 book that started Ghayour's run. Its more than 100 recipes are modern, accessible takes on food from around the southern and eastern Mediterranean rather than strict Persian tradition: lamb and sour cherry meatballs, a chicken, preserved lemon and olive tagine, Persian flatbread.
It suits a table of friends as well as a weeknight, and it is less tightly organized around effort than her later books. It won Observer Food Monthly's best cookbook of 2014. If you want the same style sorted by how much energy you have left, Persiana Everyday and Persiana Easy do that job; if you want the dishes that made her name, start here.
More about Persiana5
Meliz's Kitchen (2022)
Published
Turkish-Cypriot home cooking from a self-taught cook, and it reads like it: easy-to-follow recipes meant for family meals rather than dinner parties. The subtitle, Simple Turkish-Cypriot Comfort Food and Fresh Family Feasts, is an accurate summary of what you get.
This is the book for the weeks when you want big flavors without a specialist shopping trip. It sits closer to Turkish and eastern Mediterranean cooking than most of this list, so it fills a gap if your Levantine and Persian shelf feels full. Berg's follow-up, Dinner Tonight, pushes even further toward the weeknight end.
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Eat, Habibi, Eat! (2021)
Published
Egyptian food is underserved on most shelves, and this book fixes that with an eye on the grocery store. Massoud, a Toronto-based chef and TV host, mixes street food and casual everyday staples with his own updates on classics, and he says outright that most of the ingredients can be found at a regular supermarket.
A short pantry section covers the few special items worth buying. Shakshuka, fattoush and shawarma sit next to looser ideas like chickpea fries with harissa mayo, which makes it a good pick for cooks who like a bit of play. It won the 2022 Taste Canada award for regional and cultural cookbooks.
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Sababa (2019)
Published
Bright, market-driven Israeli cooking from Adeena Sussman's Tel Aviv kitchen, built largely on what she finds at the Carmel Market near her home. The strength for a home cook is the spice blends and condiments: make a jar of hazelnut dukkah or turmeric-rich hawaij on Sunday and a plain piece of chicken or a tray of roast vegetables tastes like something all week.
Recipes lean on tahini, sumac, za'atar, harissa and silan (date syrup), all easy to find now. Not everything is light, as the very sweet Yerushalmi kugel shows, but the everyday salads and quick dishes are the kind you cook on repeat.
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Falastin (2020)
Published
Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley's Palestinian cookbook is the best balance on this list between real tradition and real weeknights. Its more than 110 recipes are reworked for a modern home kitchen, and the book frames them as everyday meals rather than feast-day projects.
That makes it the natural next step after Ottolenghi Simple: the same clear writing and carefully tested style, with deeper roots in Palestinian home cooking. It asks a little more of your pantry than the quickest books here, so stock up on sumac, za'atar and good olive oil and you are most of the way there.
More about Falastin9
Boustany (2025)
Published
Sami Tamimi's first solo book, published in 2025, is entirely vegetarian, and that is exactly why it earns a weeknight slot. Boustany means "my garden," and the more than 100 recipes treat vegetables as the main event, with chapters running from breakfast and sharing plates to breads, sweets and easy dinners.
Vegetables, grains, legumes and herbs are cheap and quick in a way slow-cooked meat dishes are not, so a higher share of these recipes fit a Tuesday. There are bigger celebration dishes too, and a section on preserving seasonal vegetables and herbs for the pantry for the keen, but the easy dinners alone justify the shelf space.
More about Boustany10
Zaitoun (2018)
4.0/10on Open Library
Published
Yasmin Khan gathered these recipes in Palestinian kitchens across the West Bank, Gaza and Israel, and the book keeps that home-cook scale. More than 80 recipes sit alongside travel writing, so it reads well too, but the food is what brings you back.
Musakhan is the one to start with: chicken marinated with sumac and red onions, then roasted, a dish that tastes like an occasion but is mostly marinating and oven time. Khan writes for a regular kitchen, so this is a gentler, more personal companion to Falastin than a substitute for it.
More about Zaitoun11
The Palestinian table (2017)
Published
If you want to learn how a family actually eats day to day, rather than what it serves at a wedding, Reem Kassis's debut is the one. It draws on three generations of her family's cooking, and the range runs from everyday breakfasts and salads up to festive dishes, so you can stay in the shallow end as long as you like.
The recipes are written plainly and the stories explain why a dish matters, which helps when you are trying to cook by feel. It won the Guild of Food Writers First Book award. Of the Palestinian books here, this is the most thorough grounding in the basics.
More about The Palestinian table12
Sumac (2021)
Published
Syrian home cooking, written by Homs-born Anas Atassi from family recipes and memories of home. What makes it practical is the groundwork: a section on setting up a Syrian pantry and a run of the condiments and sauces you will use again and again, so later recipes come together faster.
With few exceptions the ingredients are easy to source at an ordinary grocery store, which is not something every regional cookbook can say. Expect more than 80 recipes, including tajen samak, white fish baked on sumac onions under a lemony tahini sauce, which is a ready-made weeknight dinner. NPR named it one of its best cookbooks of 2021.
More about Sumac13
Bottom of the pot (2018)
Published
Persian cooking explained by someone who has made it work far from Iran. Naz Deravian's more than 100 recipes are adapted to an American home kitchen, and that adaptation is the whole point: the rice techniques, stews and herb-heavy dishes are written for the stove and supermarket you actually have.
It takes more time than Ghayour's books, because proper Persian rice and slow stews do, but it teaches the method behind the crisp tahdig the title refers to, which pays off every time you cook rice afterward. The stories between recipes are a lovely read. It won the IACP First Book Award in 2019.
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Özlem's Turkish Table (2019)
Published
The most rooted Turkish book here. Özlem Warren is a cooking teacher from Antakya, in southern Turkey, and many of the recipes are the ones passed down through her family, organized by course across soups, dips, mezze, salads, mains and sweets.
That course-by-course layout makes it easy to build an everyday meal from a soup and a salad, or a few mezze, and save the bigger dishes for when friends come over. It is a heritage book rather than a shortcut book, so some recipes are weekend projects. It won a Gourmand World Cookbook Award in its Turkish heritage category.
More about Özlem's Turkish Table15
Jerusalem (2012)
10.0/10on Open Library
Published
The 2012 book that put tahini, sumac and za'atar into a lot of ordinary kitchens. Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi grew up in the same city, one in the Jewish west and the other in the Arab east, and the 120 recipes run from inventive vegetable dishes to rich desserts, with plenty for meat eaters in between.
It earns its place for the dishes that became staples, but be honest about the trade-off: ingredient lists run long and some recipes take an afternoon. Treat it as the book you cook from on a slow weekend and raid for two or three weeknight favorites, rather than a Tuesday workhorse. Falastin and Ottolenghi Simple are the easier routes into the same flavors.
More about Jerusalem16
A new book of Middle Eastern food (1985)
6.0/10on Open Library
Published
The New Book of Middle Eastern Food, 2000 expanded edition
Claudia Roden's classic, first published in 1968 as A Book of Middle Eastern Food and expanded over the decades, is the reference to own once you are hooked. This 2000 edition runs to more than 800 recipes from across the region, with Roden's memories of growing up in Egypt woven through, alongside folk tales, tips and anecdotes.
It is not a quick-dinner book, and it does not shy away from complex or unusual dishes. But it is the one that answers the questions the other books raise, and it shows how a dish shifts from one country to the next. Roden also offers shortcuts as well as from-scratch methods, so you choose the level of effort each night.
More about A new book of Middle Eastern food
